Amazing grace
Newton, the rescued slave-trader
John Newton is an old man now, half blind, dictating his letters in a London parish, and he still cannot get over it. Decades earlier he had walked the deck of a slave ship, a captain in the trade, a trafficker in human beings who counted his cargo in souls and called it commerce. The mercy that hauled him out of that life never grew ordinary to him. To the end he kept one sentence near, that he had once been a wretch and a great sinner and the LORD had saved him anyway. He was Paul's confession turned personal, that Christ came into the world to save sinners and he was the chief of them. So when the gospel was recovered in his century, it did not stay shut in treatises and arguments. It broke into song. Newton put his astonishment into a hymn the whole world would one day sing, a hymn about grace so amazing it could find and pardon a man like him. And he was not alone in it; Watts and the Wesleys were doing the same, setting the rescued gospel to melody. Some mercy is too large to merely think. It has to be sung.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”
— Paul, to Timothy — 1 Timothy 1:15 (WEB)
“But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us.”
Reorientation is not finished when your beliefs are correct; it finishes its work when the recovered gospel reaches the affections and spills over. The phase asks more than assent. It asks astonishment. Here it means letting the mercy that found you become wonder, and the wonder become praise carried on the lips of the rescued.
Grace can shrink into a doctrine you hold correctly and feel nothing about. Newton is the antidote. He never let the wonder cool into mere agreement, never stopped being amazed that the hands that had chained others had themselves been unchained. That astonishment is not decoration on the gospel; it is a sign the gospel has actually reached you. A man can recite that Christ saves sinners and never once tremble that he is one of them. So let what found you astonish you again. Note too what your past cannot do: the depth of where you have been can become the depth of your gratitude. The LORD did not author the wrong done to you or by you, but He reached into it and pulled you out.
Newton trembled, and the trembling turned to music. There is a difference between the person who knows about mercy and the person undone by it, and the difference often shows up exactly here, in whether the knowing ever becomes song. The depth of where he had been became the depth of his gratitude; the LORD did not author the evil of that ship, but He reached into it and pulled a man out and made him a herald. Grace that has truly landed does not stay quiet. It sings, even into the dark, and cannot quite believe its own good news.
When the gospel is genuinely recovered, the Church does not merely teach it; it sings it. The mercy is too large to stay shut in treatises. So in the awakenings the recovered gospel broke into song, Newton and Watts and the Wesleys setting the rescued good news to melody the whole world would one day carry. A faith this astonished cannot be contained in a lecture. Wherever the Body sings its rescue, genuinely amazed at being found, it bears the good news in a form that outlives every sermon and rises on its own from the once lost. The hands that wrote the hymns had themselves been unchained; the LORD did not author the evil of the slave deck, but He reached into it and made a trafficker a herald of grace.
Tunes fade and hymnals are replaced and the voices that first sang fall silent. What cannot be shaken is the mercy that gave them the song, the love rich enough to find a wretch on a slave deck and pardon him. The music is removed in time. The grace it celebrated remains, and remains amazing.
- Has the mercy that found me cooled into a doctrine I merely agree with?
- When did I last feel genuinely astonished that Christ came to save sinners, and that I am one of them?
- What would it look like for my gratitude to rise into actual praise rather than stay a quiet idea?
Lord, I confess how easily Your mercy becomes ordinary to me. You found me when I was lost and pardoned what I could not undo. Let me never get over it. Turn my agreement back into astonishment, and my astonishment into song I carry into the dark. Amen.